


let not man tear asunder

by abstractwatercolor



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Gen, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, M/M, Married Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Murder Husbands, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Silence of the Lambs References, Silence of the Lambs-Adjacent, Will Graham is a Cannibal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-27 16:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30125826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abstractwatercolor/pseuds/abstractwatercolor
Summary: The FBI wants the disgraced Dr. Lecter's help catching a killer called Buffalo Bill.  Dr. Lecter wants something in exchange.
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter & Clarice Starling, Will Graham & Clarice Starling, Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter & Clarice Starling, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 241





	1. achilles

**Author's Note:**

> A small thing I wrote after I asked myself "If Clarice offered show-canon Hannibal what he wanted more than anything else, what would he ask for?" The answer was obvious, but then I felt like Clarice would have questions. If anyone is curious, my mental image of this version of Clarice is Rebecca Breeds from the new post-SOTL TV show.

Clarice stands before a wall of glass, watching a defanged lion.

“I offered you anything you want and all you asked for was Will Graham. Why do you want so badly to see him?”

Lecter looks up from his sketchbook, his expression blank. It’s almost disarming, how normal he looks, despite his prison jumpsuit and his close-cropped hair. How harmless he appears. A carefully-crafted disguise. “Isn’t it obvious? Will is my husband. I miss him.”

Clarice can’t picture Hannibal Lecter doing something so utterly mundane as getting married. It seems beneath him, somehow, as if the institution of marriage is meant only for lesser beings. Hannibal Lecter wanted something, so Hannibal Lecter _took_. Divine right of kings.

“Agent Crawford thinks you brainwashed Graham. Manipulation, Stockholm syndrome, trauma-bonding.”

At that, Lecter’s lips twitch, as if he’s fighting off a smile. “Poor old Uncle Jack has always underestimated my darling. Quite a nasty habit of his, I’m afraid.” The casual endearment sounds alien, almost like a different language, rolling off Lecter’s tongue.

“Why did you marry him, Doctor Lecter?”

He closes the sketchbook, smoothing a hand over the gold-threaded brown leather absently, as if by habit or compulsion. “Why does anyone get married? To lay claim and be claimed, to announce to the world that one is loved and loves in return, tying a pair of people together in the eyes of law and religion.”

“In the eyes of the law. Did you marry Will Graham for the law? So he would have protection from having to testify against you?”

Lecter’s eyes meet hers. In the dim, flickering lighting, they look almost black. His expression is one of mild affront, as though Clarice has insulted his favorite book.

“Have you not ever been in love, Agent Starling? I am not so different from any other human. I married my dear Will because I loved him. And I love him still. Is that so hard to believe?”

Clarice studies him. He looks open, genuine. Mild and benign, like he could be some little girl’s favorite grandfather. It’s a very good mask.

“You’re a psychopath, Doctor. You aren’t capable of feeling love, not really.”

Lecter’s head tilts to the side, considering. He seems curious, almost bemused. As if she is a child who’s said something particularly clever or charming, not essentially insulted both his marriage and him as a person.

“Then how, Agent Starling, would you describe my feelings for my husband?”

Clarice contemplates how best to phrase her thoughts. A way to put it truthfully, for Lecter won’t accept anything but the truth, but also to get Lecter to possibly trust her. They needed his help on this case, and they wouldn’t get it if Clarice stumbled and stepped on his toes.

 _My husband. My darling. My dear Will._ Possessive. Establishing and reinforcing his claim -- his ownership -- on a man he hasn’t seen in five years.

“I think you believe that you love him. As much as you are able to. You may even feel real affection for him, as much as it serves your purposes to feel for him. I think you want to possess him, to make him part of you and keep him all for yourself. Away from those you see as undeserving of him. You are… obsessed with Will Graham.”

Of all the reactions Clarice had imagined, for Lecter to laugh was absolutely not one of them. But laugh he does, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he chuckles as if she’s just told the best joke he’s ever heard.

“Forgive me,” He says when he settles, though he looks anything but contrite. “It’s only that someone I once knew told me those same words before.”

She doesn’t think the good doctor is sharing this little anecdote purely out of a desire for connection. “What happened to them?”

Lecter’s eyes are shining with merriment. “I fed her leg to Will with a nice bottle of Chianti. A wedding feast.”

Bedelia du Maurier. Clarice had seen the news, when it happened. The woman Hannibal Lecter had taken to Europe with him, posed as his wife, and then made rich by her story after his first arrest. They had found her a few days after Lecter and Graham vanished, rotting at a table set for three, her own severed leg before her on the table.

“And did he know what he was eating?”

Lecter’s smile unfurls like a scroll freed of its binding. His canines are sharp and crooked, a tiny detail that Clarice’s mind latches onto in the wake of something so unsettling as Hannibal the Cannibal smiling at her.

“He insisted we pay her a visit. Doesn’t like the idea of sharing, my fierce boy.” His eyes are unfocused. Clarice gets the distinct impression that he is no longer seeing her. As if he is somewhere far away, probably reliving the sight of Will Graham in Bedelia du Maurier’s apartment. She wonders, idly, if Will had been bloody. If he’d killed Bedelia himself. If their so-called wedding feast had included a wedding night there, perhaps even on that same table.

Lecter won’t be any help, at least not today. Clarice turns to go, but just before she touches the door, she hears his voice again.

“Agent Starling!”

Despite every instinct, she turns back. Lecter is standing up close to the glass, closer than he had been when Clarice was sat before him.

“You said you’re from Virginia. Traditionally a very religious area. I’m sure you know your scripture.”

It isn’t phrased like a question, but Clarice finds herself nodding anyway.

“Matthew 19:6.”

It takes a moment, but she locates the passage, tucked away in some dusty, untended corner of her brain. She wants to scream, but her voice comes out as a whisper.

“ _Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man tear asunder_.”


	2. patroclus

If Hannibal Lecter is a lion, then Will Graham is a wolf.

When Clarice reaches his cell, he’s laying on his bed, on his stomach, head pillowed on his folded arms. He looks peaceful, at ease, relaxed. Like he could be sleeping. But the moment the door clicks shut behind her, his eyes snap open. He doesn’t speak. Dr. Chilton had warned her that he doesn’t speak much, especially to those sent to interview him. His cell is very much like Lecter’s: A barrier of glass, bland white walls, a narrow bed, and a small, closed-off bathroom. It’s a mirror image, installed on the other end of the building from the original after the pair were captured.

_Quite an ingenious punishment_ , _really_ , Chilton had told her, with a tone that implied all the credit should go to him, _They don’t care if they rot in here. They go away somewhere, inside, and it doesn’t matter to them if we lock them up. What matters to them is each other. They know the other is here, in the same building. But they’ll never see each other again._

In contrast to his husband, Graham’s hair is long, almost shaggy, falling around his face with an unkempt wildness that seems almost deliberate in the clinical bareness of the BSHCI. According to Chilton, he bit a chunk of wrist out of the last person to come at him with scissors.

She settles herself in the folding chair a few steps from the glass. Aside from opening his eyes, Graham hasn’t acknowledged her. But she can feel his gaze on her like a physical weight. It makes her feel exposed, raw. Bare. She feels the bizarre urge to cover herself with her arms, as if she were nude.

Dr. Chilton hadn’t accompanied her to see Lecter, claiming his presence would only distract Lecter, but now he lingers in the corner of the room. He’s frowning, eyes squinted, as if he wants to scowl but the damaged muscles under his patchwork skin can’t quite manage it. He’d invited himself to accompany her, claiming Clarice would need him to be a buffer between her and Graham.

“You have a guest, Will.” Chilton’s voice isn’t as smooth as it once was, vocal cords permanently scarred by the fire of the Dragon. Still, it has an unpleasant air of oiliness, like he thinks himself better than the other people in the room. “You wouldn’t want to be rude, would you?”

_Don’t let them in your head_ , Crawford had instructed her before she left. _Never forget what they are._

_What is that, sir?_ She had asked.

As Will Graham sits up, body moving with a fluid grace that seems almost dangerous, Clarice thinks that the answer to that question might be _predators_. He settles on his heels, legs tucked neatly under his bottom. His eyes have not left Clarice’s face since they opened, even when Chilton spoke to him.

“Frederick,” He says, mild and pleasant, as if they’re neighbors chatting over a fence, “I would say how nice it is to see you, but unfortunately, one of your eyes still works.”

She hears an affronted splutter that sounds rather like the air being suddenly let out of a balloon.

“Really, you have the audacity to—”

“Leave us be, Frederick. You’re only in here to stay close to the young lady here, and she isn’t interested in the slightest. Unless, of course, you know a good place to take her for barbecue.”

His voice is cool and casual, but his eyes are intense, burning where Lecter’s had been freezing. Clarice thinks suddenly of the fond indulgence in Lecter’s voice when he told her of their dinner with Bedelia du Maurier. _My fierce boy_.

The door behind her opens and shuts. She deliberately doesn’t look to see if Chilton has left. Will Graham watches her. She’s heard of his gift, the uncanny ability to see from a perspective not his own. To see what others want to hide. She wonders what he sees looking into her eyes. She should be introducing herself, bringing up the questionnaire Crawford had sent her with. But instead she sits quietly, watching and waiting.

“What’s your name?” It’s the first time he’s addressed her, and he sounds polite, interested, even friendly. If not for the glass between them and the white jumpsuit he’s clad in, this could be a normal conversation. Clarice realizes, with an odd sense of something like _déjà vu_ , that if things had gone a little differently, she might have been one of his students.

“Clarice Starling, sir.”

His nose crinkles, as if he smells something horrible. “Don’t call me sir. Reminds me of being a teacher.”

“Did you not like teaching?”

“No, I liked teaching well enough, what I didn’t like was interacting with the people I was teaching.”

“Mr. Graham,” He huffs softly at being addressed as such, but Clarice carries on, “I was asked to come here to ask you to fill out a questionnaire.” Leaning forward, she places the papers into the delivery slot. “If you wouldn’t mind too awful bad.”

“Mind too awful bad,” Graham echoes, and Clarice feels her face heat up at her lapse in control. He smiles softly, and there’s something close to fondness in his gaze. “Where are you from, Clarice?”

_Don’t tell them anything about yourself_ , Crawford orders in her mind, _Don’t give them anything they could use against you_. But Lecter already knows where she’s from, so what could really be the harm in telling Graham.

“West Virginia.”

A spark of mischief flares in Graham’s eyes, and he drawls, “ _Laissez les bon temps rouler, cher.”_ Clarice hasn’t been that far south before, but she took French in high school, and the rough, elongated accent he’s slipped into is easy enough to place. She hums an acknowledgement, and Graham finally stands, walking to the delivery slot as if he’s on a casual Sunday stroll. He picks up the questionnaire and leafs through it without interest.

“Mr. Graham, Jack Crawford sent me to—” She stutters to a stop as Graham drops the papers back into the tray as if they burned his hands.

“Jack sent you?” The friendly almost-familiarity is gone without a trace, replaced by something hard and cold and biting. And then he tilts his head back and laughs, loud and hard, like he’s the happiest man in the world. Clarice feels like his laughter goes on forever. “Of course he did.” He wipes his hand under his eyes, a smile without mirth on his face. “Jack sent a trainee to us.”

_Us._ Clarice hasn’t mentioned Lecter, but somehow Graham seems to know. “God help us all, he sent another dish out on the table.” The eerie still and calm has vanished, and Will Graham looks like a man haunted, his eyes dark and sad and pitying. His right hand keeps rubbing at his left hand. No, she realizes, after a moment, not his left hand. His left ring finger. A strip of skin just slightly paler than the rest of his hand. Where a wedding ring would sit, were he not exactly where he is.

“Excuse me?”

“Poor little Clarice,” He says mournfully, even sympathetic, “Another little lamb offered up on the altar of Jack’s ambition. What will he do, I wonder, when his old friend Hannibal bleeds this one out too?”

“Crawford didn’t make me come here.”

“Oh no, no, he just convinced you that any risk to you is outweighed by the greater good, right? Did he ask to borrow your imagination? You aren’t the first one he’s offered up as a sacrifice to my Hannibal’s bloodlust. You should mention that to Jack, y’know. Miriam Lass, Will Graham, Clarice Starling. Three strikes and he’s out.”

“He only asked me to try to get you and Dr. Lecter to fill this out for the sake of research.”

Graham sits back down on his bed. “Research, huh? Don’t that just sound like Jack? Locks me up, throws away the key, then tries to keep rustling around in my brain again anyway. No, Clarice. I’m done with all that.”

Defeated, Clarice picks up her bag to go. Before she can stand, however, Graham says, “Do me a favor, Clarice. Pass a message to Jack for me.”

She looks up, and Graham is standing right up against the barrier, his hand pressed to the glass. “Yes?”

“Tell him if he wants anything from me, not to try bullshitting me.” His eyes are burning again. “It was a nice try, sending you to me, but I don’t fall for his little manipulations anymore.”

“Manipulations, Mr. Graham?” She hadn’t been aware of any manipulation on Crawford’s part. She’d simply been told to ask Graham and Lecter to fill out the form.

There is a wistful, sad sort of smile on Graham’s face, and his eyes are far away. “You really do look like her.”


	3. iphigenia

Clarice dreams.

She’s standing in front of her uncle’s barn. It’s bigger than she remembers, huge and malevolent and hungry, like the mouth of a titan. Kronos who devoured his children rather than risk being usurped.

“ _Poor little Clarice,”_ Croons Will Graham’s voice in her ear, “ _Little lamb_.”

She pushes the heavy door open. In the middle of the barn, bathed in a perfect circle of moonlight, is Will Graham. Rather than the baggy prison uniform she’d seen him in during her waking hours, he wears a suit the precise dark blue of his eyes. In his arms is cradled a lamb.

“Don’t hurt him,” she pleads, stepping forward with a hand outstretched. Graham tilts his head, as if he’s confused.

“Another sacrifice,” he says serenely. In the moonlight, his skin and the lamb’s wool are the same bone-white, his hair dark as ink. The lamb rests contentedly against him, peaceful as a sleeping baby, and Graham’s smile down at the little creature is as loving as any parent. “You really do look like her.”

“Please—”

Clarice blinks and she’s the one held tightly against Graham’s chest, his arms pinning her in place. She feels the cool kiss of a blade against her throat. She should scream, should struggle for her life, but she isn’t afraid. He won’t harm her, she knows intuitively. He would never harm her. Clarice feels safe in his arms, safer than she feels anywhere else. She relaxes, lets her head loll back, away from the blade and onto his shoulder. She turns her head and tucks her face into the crook of his neck. The hand that held a knife moments ago gently cradles the back of her head, the way her daddy used to soothe her when she had nightmares.

“Shh, shh, I gotcha.” he murmurs, accent thick and warm like honey.

“Jack sent a trainee to us.” Graham’s words, from their talk, but not Graham’s voice. “Three strikes and he’s out.” She can’t see him, but Lecter sounds pleased, almost affectionate. Clarice can hear his footsteps approach, soft rustles against the straw-strewn floor. She feels it when he joins them in their moon spotlight, feels it in the warmth of Lecter’s body and the yearning sigh that slips from Graham.

“ _Mon cher_ ,” Graham breathes, and the pure adoration in his voice makes tears sting in Clarice’s eyes.

Very close to her, she hears the soft, wet sound of skin moving against skin. They’re kissing, she realizes, despite the presence of her body between them. It’s like she isn’t there, or like she simply doesn’t matter.

“My love,” And if she hadn’t known on some level that she was dreaming already, this would confirm it to her, because in her real life, she has never heard Hannibal Lecter sound so tender and loving. “My darling, my Will.”

She feels Graham’s head move, tilting towards the other side. The motion pulls his neck away from her, leaving her feeling exposed, and she whimpers softly at the loss. She feels long fingers grip her chin, gentle but firm, and turn her head. She opens her eyes and meets Lecter’s gaze. His eyes are curious and calculating, and she wants to pull away, to put distance between them, but she can’t, not with him just in front of her and Graham against her back, arms holding her. Lecter, too, is wearing a suit, dark as the night around them, but his tie is the color of blood.

“You brought me an Iphigenia, beloved,” Lecter purrs, and Clarice wants to hide against Graham again, his tender hand on the back of her head a counterpoint to Lecter’s iron grasp of her chin. “My fierce Patroclus, finding us such a perfect sacrifice.”

Graham’s lips press against her temple, gentle and protective and paternal, as he whispers in her ear, “Don’t move, darlin’.”

His hand and Lecter’s are both wrapped around the blade when they drag it across her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three more chapters planned, but we'll see what ends up happening. As you might have guessed, this takes place during SOTL but mainly focuses on Clarice's relationship with Hannigram/her view of them and their relationship, and the actual Buffalo Bill case is just kind of touched on. Watching SOTL now, the whole thing with Jame Gumb comes across very questionable, and as someone who identifies as nonbinary, I'm not comfortable with digging into it as presented in canon. If the case/the perpetrator is discussed, it will definitely be changed in some way, and I'm frankly hoping to include as little of it as possible.


	4. agamemnon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this story is kind of meant to be read/interpreted as almost like a series of flashbacks (in my mind) so things may be a bit out of order. In particular, most of this chapter takes place before Clarice meets either of the Murder Husbands

“You said yourself, sir, that Lecter is the best person to consult on this case,” Clarice points out.

Crawford looks up at her then, and his face is worn and haggard. For all his semi-legendary status at the Bureau, Jack Crawford is only a man of clay and dust, after all. And Jack Crawford looks exhausted.

“Lecter will only help if he gets something in return that he wants as much as we want to catch Buffalo Bill.”

“He’s in maximum security federal prison until he dies. What could he possibly want?”

Crawford heaves a sigh, as if the answer physically pains him. “Will Graham.”

Clarice has heard of Will Graham, of course. Everyone at the Academy has. He’s a legend. A ghost. A cautionary tale. Don’t get too close to the monsters, or you’ll be devoured by one. Become one. Some people, the ones who use humor to cope with the darkness they see, have made a joke of him. During midterms, or finals, or brutal all-nighters: _Maybe Will Graham had the right idea. I’m about ready to jump off that cliff._

FBI employee turned FBI’s Most Wanted. The Guru’s prize bloodhound, gone rabid.

“Murder Husbands,” Clarice breathes, and the look Crawford shoots her is sharp as a knife.

“That’s a tacky nickname made up to grab attention, given to them by a journalist they both hate.”

Clarice bites back the impulse that it would be a faster count to sort out who in this building _doesn’t_ hate Freddie Lounds, as opposed to those who do. “But it’s true, though, isn’t it?” She taps a finger against the thick manila folder on Crawford’s desk. If she opens it, she knows, the first things she will see will be the former profiler’s mugshot and plain black text clinically declaring his full legal name: _William Thomas Graham-Lecter._

“I don’t believe that.” Crawford replies, and though he’s trying to sound detached, the venom in his voice is personal.

“To piss them off.”

“Because them being able to somehow get legally married and legally change their names while they’re fugitives doesn’t make any sense.”

Clarice remembers the media sensation around their capture and trials. Remembers the debate about this exact topic, the experts brought in to confer and give their professional opinions. Nobody could work out quite how they managed it, but it was all completely legitimate. Dr. Hannibal Graham-Lecter and Mr. William Graham-Lecter were married, legally bound, and each officially protected from having to testify against his husband. Given everything else against them, testimony from either of them wasn’t necessary to lock them both up and throw away the key. Most people simply continued to refer to them by their original names, the ones they’d been known by when each of them was arrested the first time. But it was obviously very important to them to have their _legal and legitimate marriage_ recognized in court, where the media would spread it worldwide.

And equally as important to Jack Crawford to ignore that fact.

“It was all above-board, sir, that was worked out when they were brought in.”

Crawford doesn’t answer, but suddenly it clicks.

“But they’re locked up for the rest of their lives. You can’t get revenge for what they’ve done to you, or at least not the kind of revenge you think they deserve. So you punish them with small, petty insults, like refusing to acknowledge that they’re married.”

Crawford glowers. “Starling, I have one, very last, good nerve, and you are _tap-dancing_ on it.”

She looks down, properly chastised. “Sorry, sir.”

* * *

Will Graham, after two years on the run, two years of Hannibal Lecter’s constant company, is a fierce and feral creature. Tan and long-haired and lithe, with a hardness in his eyes that Jack doesn’t remember seeing there before. He bit several people during their capture and, then, his processing, before someone thought to muzzle him as they had Lecter. The man who removed his ring -- Not the one from Molly, which had been left on the bedside table of a rumpled bed in a house by the sea, but a new, different ring -- had lost his own ring finger for his trouble, bitten clean through like it was a baby carrot. Will had looked Jack in the eyes as he swallowed it whole, human flesh and blood and bone, and then smiled with dripping red teeth.

Jack remembers the shy, stuttering teacher he had yanked out of a classroom and feels the weight of failure. They have returned Lecter to his original cell, but for lack of another like it, they have placed Will, for the moment, in a normal, barred cell. Rather like the one he inhabited the first time he had been in here, before he was truly a killer. Will glares at him with something very close to hatred.

“I want to see him.” Is the first thing out of the former profiler’s mouth. Jack is entirely unsurprised. _Lecter thinks you’re his man in the room. I think you’re mine._ He wonders if Will had ever truly been his man in the room. If Will had been Hannibal’s the whole time. If he himself had doomed Will by bringing them together.

“You know I can’t let that happen, Will.”

“You could. You just don’t _want_ to. Does it make you feel powerful, keeping me away from him?”

“He had you for two years, Will. Maybe some distance is exactly what you need right now.”

“ _Had_ me?" Will's laugh is hard and harsh, like a slap to the face, "Christ, Jack, you make it sound like he tied me up over a shark tank or something. I was with him because I wanted to be.”

Jack has seen the video of that moonlit, bloody cliff. Will in Lecter's arms, head on his chest like a slow dance at a wedding. A breathless _"It's beautiful"_ that sounds like a love confession. He knows the evidence that was found in the house by the sea, sheets stained with sweat and other bodily fluids. The evidence that was found in their little house in Spain. No restraint, no drugs, but plenty of meat, and plenty of evidence that the two had been… intimate. Some horrible, pained part of Jack wants Will to say he had been forced -- Coerced or drugged or brainwashed. Stockholm syndrome, capture-bonding, something like that, anything but what the facts lay out before him. That would make it easier.

”What did he do to you, Will?”

Will’s smile is no longer bloody, but it’s just as much a weapon as he grins, slow and sensual, and purrs, “Nothing I didn’t want him to.”

* * *

Clarice flings the two rejected copies of the questionnaire onto Crawford's desk. "What the hell did you just set me up for?"

Crawford pinches the bridge of his nose. "Starling, I really don't need the dramatics right now."

"Oh, you don't need dramatics? Lecter just talked circles around me in metaphors and Bible verses and Graham called me your third sacrifice to Lecter and said it was manipulative of you to send me because I look like _her_. Whoever the hell that is."

Crawford closes his eyes. Clarice wants to shake him.

"Abigail Hobbs," he says after a moment, "She was... the daughter of a serial killer, the first person Will killed. He and Lecter saved her life, and the three of them... bonded, I guess. They were her guardians, and Will told me once that both of them considered her like a daughter. They wanted to be a messed up little cannibal family."

"What happened to her?"

"Hannibal faked her death to frame Will for murder and then actually killed her in front of Will."

Clarice blinks, very slowly, and wonders if it's possible to spontaneously develop auditory hallucinations. 

"But if they wanted to be a family, why would he kill her?"

Crawford sighs. "Because he's a bastard whose moral compass is a _fucking_ roulette wheel, Starling. He was punishing Will for not actually killing Freddie Lounds. I don't know, I don't understand him. Nobody but Will can understand him."


End file.
